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  1. slashdot on Tech Columnists' Day Without Email · · Score: 4, Funny

    How would productivity be affected if /. was down for a day?

  2. Master of publicity on Apple/Intel Speculation Running Rampant · · Score: 1

    I don't know what is going to happen during Steve Jobs keynote today.

    But we do have to recognize that he knows what he is doing when it comes to public relations.

    It might even be possible that Apple has been encouraging these rumours, just so that all eyes will be on Steve Jobs when he does his keynote.

    There's a number of people that populistically is claiming that Apple will move to Intel CPU's.

    Most fans of Apple thinks that it is a bad idea.

    So, if his big news during the keynote is Mac OS X 11, then that will be hailed as the best news ever, if for no other reason that they didn't go with Intel.

  3. Going to the moon on NPR Talks Skyhooks · · Score: 1

    I find this technology very intriguing. But it took me a long time to realise that they are serious. First time I heard about this I had to check if it was April first.

    Anyway, the most interesting thing I heard in this interview was that they said that if you let the elevator go up really far, close to the counter weight, and let go of an object there, it would fly faster than with conventional rockets because of the centrifugal motion.

    So that could be used to fling stuff from earth really fast. And since the earth angle varies quite significantly it can be sent to a a great different places.

    There is still a large number of directions that one of these objects can't go too, but, still, pretty cool.

  4. Re:Tie fighter = Falling down on TIE Fighter Case Mod · · Score: 1


    Did I ruin Star Wars or Falling Down for you?

  5. Tie fighter = Falling down on TIE Fighter Case Mod · · Score: 1

    When I hear the words Tie fighter I can't help but think about this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/

  6. Re:No thanks.... on Free Upgrade From XP Home to XP Pro Lite · · Score: 1


    That's much better than my plan to sell a kidney.

  7. sure, shrimp farms and sediment... on Changing Planet Revealed In Atlas · · Score: 1


    But can it tell that my lawn service came today?

  8. Re:no on point 2 on Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006 · · Score: 1

    That's the instruction set.

    But what about other things? There could be other physical limitations that differe between the two.

    I'm not saying there are other physical differences. I'm just admitting to being clueless.

  9. Rip off, not a rip off? on Apple to Recycle your iPod for Free · · Score: 1

    Some say this is a rip off, but first, nobody is forcing you to do it.

    Second, if you do give it back to able you can be fairly certain that it gets re-used or recycled properly. And that is a good thing, and important to many.

  10. Windows on Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006 · · Score: 1


    Use your magic eight ball for this.

    Would you be able to run Windows on an Intel Mac?

    I'm pretty sure Apple wouldn't want it, but can they prevent it? After all, you can run Linux on an Apple machine, so why not Windows? If it was Intel I mean.

  11. Re:AMD on Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How it makes more sense?

    This is of course only my opinion but here's how I'm thinking.

    1) AMD has the performance edge for x86
    2) I _think_ they are more 64 bit centric than the Intel afterthought 64 bit processors (but don't quote me on this).
    3) AMD has 64 bit laptop chips (I think).
    4) AMD are more energy efficient, at least on the desktop.
    5) AMD is not Intel and therefor has less "Wintel" over itself. AMD is "different". Apple likes being different.

  12. Ooooooh! Oooooooh! on Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006 · · Score: 1

    I really, really, really hope you are rigbht (that is how right is spelled while drooling).

    Let it be ARM and a new Newton.

    If that were the case I can't wait to see the result. Say what you will about Apple, but they do innovate. And they do make classy stuff.

    It would be really nice if they could do something for the handheld market.

  13. MacPlaymate, anyone? on Will Sex In Games Ever Be Sexy? · · Score: 1

    Does anyone remember a "game" called MacPlaymate?

    It was a game with a naked woman and a number of "toys" with a self evident objective. This was all the rage at our University Macintosh lab for about 2 days, and then never to be seen again.

  14. AMD on Apple Switching To Intel Chips In 2006 · · Score: 1

    This doesn't make sense on many levels.

    But if they were to switch to x86 it would make more sense if they switched to AMD than to Intel.

  15. Re:Creating threads slow? on G5 vs. x86 and Mac OS X vs. Linux · · Score: 1


    You need a bunch of threads to do this efficiently. The point is, you should use a pool of worker threads throughout the life of the process.

    This pool can grow and shrink as the load changes but this is fairly rare and won't affect the performance.

    With a uniform load the thread pool will grow to its optimal size and after that no threads will be created or removed.

  16. Re:Creating threads slow? on G5 vs. x86 and Mac OS X vs. Linux · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's not what I mean't.

    You need threads. But you create 20 threads at the beginning (or something) and then you use those throughout the life of the application.

    You can grow the number of threads dynamically to best suit your load.

    But the point is, you don't create threads all the time. You pick a thread up from a thread pool.

    Creating threads on Windows and Linux may be 5 times faster than on Mac OS X, but it is still a relatively slow operation. A thread pool makes sense there as well.

    I'm not saying that it is OK that thread creation is slow. But creating a thread that lives for less than a second is a bad design for a server application.

    Another poster stated that MySQL uses thread pools however. So that puts things in another light. If the problem wasn't because creating threads are slow, then Mac OS X had another problem.

  17. Re:Ummmm...... on G5 vs. x86 and Mac OS X vs. Linux · · Score: 1

    No,

    The point is that MySQL would run even faster if it used a thread pool.

    I don't know the internals of MySQL so maybe I'm mistaken and they use a thread pool. I'm just basing my information on the article.

    I'm wondering if I'm having a brain lapse and I'm missing something. Because what I read is that the system is slow because of creating threads, and Apple had three people helping out with the tests and they are unable to explain what I wrote in my grand parent post.

    Am I missing something?

  18. Re:Well Duh! on G5 vs. x86 and Mac OS X vs. Linux · · Score: 1

    The entire paragraph reads

    "It is a professional 64 bit Dream machine with supersonic speed! It is beautiful. It is about the ultimate user friendliness. It is about a lifestyle. It is a class apart. You guessed it - I am parroting Apple's marketing."

    And... you can guess where it is headed after that... The article goes on to slam Apple.

  19. Creating threads slow? on G5 vs. x86 and Mac OS X vs. Linux · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm not a Mac Zealot, lets start with that.

    But they are running a test and are identifying the thread creation as being really slow on the Mac and that that is the cause for the Mac's slow performance on the MySQL test.

    Come now, if you are running software that is slow because you are creating threads all the time then you need to change software.

    Use some kind of threadpool and *kaping*, problem is gone.

    This is more revealing for MySQL than it is about Mac OS X.

  20. Re:Google summer of code runner up on Who Should Help LinuxFund Distribute $126,155.29? · · Score: 1

    Over the years many projects will end up having no activity.

    Sourceforge, while having many issues, does make it easy to see which projects that has activity.
    See this link for activity ranking: http://sourceforge.net/top/mostactive.php?type=wee k

    There is also a system to advertise for programmers. http://sourceforge.net/people/

    I'd say that the grand parent is, however fun and however nice the thought is, is misdirected energy.

    Help make SourceForge better instead.

    You say that you are unsure how to get involved with an open source project. Have you tried the obvious of contacting one of the developers in a project that you find appealing?

  21. SP2? on Korean MSN Site Hacked · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not that this is very important, but they wouldn't be running their servers with SP2.

    They are likely running Windows Server 2003 and the latest service pack for WS2K3 is SP1. SP1 for WS2k3 came out after SP2 for XP so it should contain everything that SP2 contains.

  22. I found his home page on How the Secret Service Busted ShadowCrew · · Score: 1

    I had to look him up on the internet. He has a web page here:

    http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stoll/

    It is funny, because it is really simple and it is actually invalid. I had to view the page source to find the intended links.

    It has the answer to one of the number puzzles that he mentioned in the book (but never gives the answer to if I remember correctly).

  23. Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll on How the Secret Service Busted ShadowCrew · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is a really good book by a guy called Cliff Stoll called Cuckoo's egg about how he chased down a hacker in the early days of the Internet.

    It wasn't even really the Internet as we know it today.

    It will be nostalgia for old timers and a history lesson for the "noobs" around here.

    Anyway, it is very interesting. I recommend it highly.

  24. Re:Separate information from presentation? on Microsoft Ends Era Of Closed File Formats · · Score: 1


    Then I'd like a way to enforce only the use of styles.

    This could be a property of the document or maybe of the template.

  25. Separate information from presentation? on Microsoft Ends Era Of Closed File Formats · · Score: 1

    What I want to know is, will this new format separate information from presentation?

    For instance, will the format be

    <font name="arial" size="18" style="bold">my heading</font>

    or will it be

    <heading level="2">my heading</heading>

    I definitely prefer the latter (with information and presentation separated), but sadly I think it is more likely that we'll see the former.

    If you have the presentation separately then it is much easier to for instance standardize a look a feel within a company.